


every line is plotted and designed (to leave you)

by icouldnotsee (herprettysleeper)



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Established Simon Lewis/Maia Roberts, F/M, M/M, Multi, Pining, except he doesn't know it's pining which makes it fun, sometimes it's your own initial inability to be emotionally vulnerable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 15:43:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16895424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herprettysleeper/pseuds/icouldnotsee
Summary: In which Jace does not love Simon or Maia, and definitely not both of them, not at all.





	every line is plotted and designed (to leave you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hiddeninyourblood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddeninyourblood/gifts).



> Happy birthday Lauren! Thank you for being my friend; you're the best a girl could ask for <3 This is based of your prompt from way back in April; sorry it took me 8 months to finish.
> 
> The prompt:
> 
> can I PLEASE have a Simon/Maia/Jace fic where Simon/Maia is canon, and pretty much the whole thing is about Jace pining for what they have without realizing that, no, he doesn't just want to be in love, but that he's in love with both of them? Maybe a heated argument between Jace and Simon where Jace finally admits his feelings and Simon goes all soft(TM)? Can be AU or nah, whatever you want really! kthanksloveyoubye
> 
> The title is from the song [My Heart Is The Worst Kind Of Weapon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovz9aZ8ynSo) by Fall Out Boy.
> 
> Hope you like :)

****He breaks into the small church in the middle of the night, goes to the podium and searches around the stage and opens up the grand piano to find seraph blades, thank the Angel. He’s still clutching his side where there’s a deep gash, and he draws an iratze over it and hopes that keeps his side from caving in for now.

The demon starts to breach the church’s doors—no matter how many times he sees it happen, he still feels like they shouldn’t be able to—and its slime starts killing the dandelions growing along the sidewalk. He runs towards it, lands a blow in its torso, and Jace can see the blade glow and then die in the beast’s flesh.

This was __not__ what he intended to do on his Saturday off. He was just going to walk along the beach by himself, look at the ocean or do something else pleasantly useless.

This isn’t pleasant in the slightest.

He takes it down eventually with a few well-timed blows and a jagged fang reopening his wound and widening it. He takes a nice and steady couple steps; he personally thinks he’s doing great, actually, for the few seconds before he passes out.

~*~

He wakes up to a kid around six in his Sunday best looking down at him. He’s holding hands with Maia, who’s in a black and white dress with a sash around her waist, looking as beautiful as ever.

“What the fuck,” she says.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he replies, fading into black again.

~*~

“So let’s talk about __boundaries.__ ” Maia’s leaning against the door frame of what is her and Simon’s room.

“That actually wasn’t in my plan,” he admits. “Also, you go to church?”

She crosses her arms. “My mom just wanted me along for once. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“Oh.” In the resulting silence, he can feel the quiet throb of his side. He touches it—there’s a bandage and the pain is minimized. “Did you clean me up?”

He notices for the first time that’s she’s back in bar clothes, dress hung over her ironing board. He looks out the window—it’s dark again. “I told Simon you’re here so he wouldn’t be surprised. Goodbye, Jace. Don’t make yourself at home.”

“You work Sunday nights?”

“ _ _Goodbye,__  Jace.”

He slumps back onto the couch for a few seconds, and then sighs and gets up, starting to wobble over to the living room, and makes a bad move because pain shoots throughout his body, and his wound pulls, and he crawls back to the bed. It’s pretty pathetic, in general, so he makes the choice to go back to sleep.

~*~

There is this one recurring dream he has, where he’s not a Shadowhunter, just a mundane. He’s got an okay job and lives in a little apartment, and there’s no glory in it, but there is peace. He never realizes its a dream until the end of it, when there’s a note on his bed that someone left. It always says: “Sorry I couldn’t say bye this morning! I got called in early for work. I love you, darling.” It’s not till that last line the unreality wakes him up.

~*~

“You left blood on my carpet,” Simon says. It’s a pretty offhand comment; he’s not particularly focused on anything but Jace’s side.

“Really apologetic about that,” says Jace. He winces a little when Simon gets the alcohol soaked cotton pad onto his wound, cleaning up some dried blood. The room is unnaturally quiet, and Jace realizes he can only hear his own breathing. Simon’s holding his breath as he works on him.

When he places a new bandage on Jace can hear him exhale.

Simon hops up off the bed to the bathroom and washes his hands—Jace watches him do so, and when Simon sees him in the mirror, he looks away, searching the bed. “My stele,” he says.

“You can’t find it?” Simon replies, shaking the water off his hands.

“No—might’ve lost it in the fight. I’ll find it later.”

Simon nods and starts to head out of the room. “Anyway, you want something to eat? I’m about to make breakfast.”

“Uh, sure,” Jace says, and Simon says, “’kay, great,” and leaves, closing the door behind him.

Jace finds the stele fallen between the headboard and the bed. He checks the wound—he can’t put an iratze on it unless he gets the poison out, but there’s none there, just the burns from initial contact. They did an okay job, then. He draws the iratze and gets to his feet and follows Simon into the rest of the small one bedroom apartment.

Maia’s out there, and they’re cooking together, a breakfast of pancakes and sausage and eggs, Maia says something that makes Simon laugh, and he smears a bit of pancake batter on her face, which she retaliates pretty quickly with, and then they’re back to cooking.

He catches himself staring after about five minutes, at which point he opts for staring at his plate. He wants to ask if he can help, but he doesn’t really know anything about cooking except that one time Clary and Magnus showed him how to make mac and cheese.

Maia brings him a plate, and they all sit at the table. Simon has a plate too, which makes his head fill with question marks, especially when Maia says, “You’re sure?”

Simon smiles, though it only half reaches his eyes. “It’s fine. Plus I haven’t had a proper breakfast in a while, you know.”

Her mouth is pursed for a moment as she watches him, but then she’s eating again, and they start talking again, and he doesn’t want to think that he’s third wheeling, but God if he isn’t.

~*~

It’s a boring week. He finds a swarm of demons in a nightclub and he, Izzy, and Alec finish them all off with minimal scratches. It kind of reminds him of the night he met Clary a little, before the world went to shit.

His room in the institute is a little visually cold, he realizes. There’s an assortment of weapons, a few steles, a neat minimal wardrobe, but not much life in it. There are a few meetings, but they’re mostly perfunctory, and Alec has to stay behind to do the actual negotiating with Idris. There’s really not anything to do the night of his day off, so he heads to the bar.

He already knows Maia will be there—the one thing he’s good at understanding are patterns, which include schedules—and she smiles when she sees him. “My least favorite customer,” she greets. “The usual?”

“Yup.” He slouches into a bar stool, kind of relieved to be there. He can’t really pinpoint why. She brings him his drink, and he notices her hair, half up, half let loose. “Like the hair,” he says.

She reaches up to touch it, almost as a reflex. “Thank you.” It’s reluctant but sincere. Then, changing the subject: “Heard you guys’ve been in meetings all week.”

“Yeah, but that’s just the Clave being the Clave. Honestly would rather not have to deal with that, and just do my job.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

He sips, then pauses to joke, “You spit in this one?”

She raises her arms in a don’t-look-at-me gesture. “That’s the question, isn’t it.”

He smiles.

Magnus shows up pretty soon after and plops next to them. “Maia, Shadowhunter.”

“I have a name,” Jace says.

“He knows,” supplies Maia.

Jace rolls his eyes playfully, then asks her, “Where’s your other half?”

“With Raphael,” she says. “He keeps insisting on how to How to Be a Vampire 101 lessons.”

“Huh.”

“Here he is,” says Magnus and Simon sits on the stool on the other side of Jace and Maia gives him a brief kiss over the counter.

“What are we talking about?” he says with a pretty, bright smile, because he spends so much of his time unironically delighted by other people, which is, unfortunately, incredibly endearing.

“You, actually,” Jace says.

“Huh. I finally grew on you then.”

“Yeah, absolutely not,” Jace laughs.

“Hey! I’ll have you know I have a multitude of excellent qualities.”

Jace raises an eyebrow. “I’d love to hear an example, because I’m pretty sure you spend seventy percent of your time crying about Star Wars.”

“I want you to know that I’ve made the active decision to excuse your bad taste,” Simon says, which gets Jace to smile again. “But anyway, since you’re here, you can show us all your best Blue Steel.”

“What?”

“You don’t know—Magnus, explain to Jace what Blue Steel means.”

Magnus sips on a Martini, obviously fascinated by current events.

“Maia?” Simon asks.

“I’m working,” she says in a bit of a sing-songy tune, turning to the back to mix a drink for another customer.

“Wow…” he says, sounding almost sincerely disappointed. __Almost.__ “Alright, I’ll demonstrate—” and then the worst expression that Jace has ever seen in his life. He wheezes.

“Why __on Earth—__ ”

“Uh, I was __demonstrating,__ ” he says. “Your turn.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“What? This is the most important thing you’ll ever do in your life.”

“Again: no.”

Magnus clicks his tongue. “You know how Jace is. Naturally stoic.”

Jace snorts.

Maia puts a hand on her hip. “Yeah, entirely serious. Never broke a rule in his life. We all know he follows the Clave’s rules to a T.”

“Never stolen weapons from behind my wardrobe, either,” Magnus says, which kinda gets a tiny alarm off in Jace’s head, because he was positive that Magnus didn’t know about that.

“In my defense,” he starts, stops. “Actually, my actions don’t need defending.”

“True,” Simon says, then drops his voice a couple registers. “I’m Jace Wayland Lightwood Herondale probably another three extra knowing you, and I’m the greatest Shadowhunter alive, and—”

“That’s pretty much it.”

“—I’ve got long flowing blonde hair that the fae themselves envy, and one time, I healed a dying child with the power of my charm.”

Jace silently laughs, and these people are __horrible,__ and he wouldn’t mind being around them for the rest of his life.

But time passes, and Maia’s shift ends. When Maia and Simon leave, they leave with their fingers interlaced; Jace is quiet for a moment. He’s looking at the table through an empty glass.

“So how long?”

His head turns to Magnus. “What?”

“Them. Like, head over heels is pretty much written all over your face at this point, Jace.”

“I’m not—”

“Wouldn’t be the first Herondale to fall in love with two people at once, you know.”

He doesn’t think it’s the right time to say that, maybe he wants something like that, but not them specifically. That they’re just good friends (and if him from a year ago saw him calling Simon his friend, he wouldn’t believe it).

“Don’t think I fall into that group.” He stands and tips his head at Magnus. “Gotta head back to the institute, there’s a Clave meeting in a few hours.”

“Yeah, I know,” Magnus intones.

Right.

“You can talk to me about it when you’re ready, alright?”

“I’ll pass.”

Magnus smiles and stands—he has to get back to his own duties soon too. “Offer’s still there.”

~*~

It takes him about seven minutes into a stroll to realize that he’s heading to Simon and Maia’s place. He knocks on the door, and he knows one person is inside—there are feet moving, and they don’t even bother turning off Netflix to pretend they’re not in there, so he’s pretty sure—

Simon opens the door with a smile. “You live here now, bro?” It’s meant to be sarcastic, but there’s a genuine smile on his face, and he lets him in. There are some worrying bags under Simon’s eyes, which is…not great, seeing as there’s no way for him to get sleep deprived anyway.

“I’d never,” Jace says. Simon’s skin looks grey, and he reaches up to touch his face. “Are you alright?” He realizes he’s doing and almost freezes, but Simon ducks his head and pulls back before he can traipse into bone-searing regret.

“I’m fine, just not feeling great today, but it’s like that sometimes. For people. Just getting sick. You know.” He’s not making eye contact. “Um, anyway, I was watching House of Cards, so if you want to.”

“Sure.” Should probably keep watch of him, in case he does something particularly stupid.

About halfway into the season five premiere, Simon starts looking queasy and gets up. “I’ll be back in a sec,” and then he darts to the bathroom, fast enough that he’s just a blur.

He’s in there for a little too long. After half an hour he heads over.

He knocks gently on the door. “Simon? You alright?”

After two minutes of no reply, he creaks open the door.

There’s vomit near the toilet, but most of it didn’t make it, landing on the red rug around it. Simon’s in the empty bathtub, shivering, and Jace gets down on his knees and props his head on his palm. Simon starts to push on him, only really half there, and “Hey, it’s me,” Jace says. “Just me,” and Simon stops.

“What ha—” he remembers the breakfast from a few days ago. Did he eat regular food today too?

“There’s a mess, you shouldn’t—”

“I know, but are you okay?”

Simon nods. “It’s out of my system, I’ll clean up and go lay down or something, and he starts to stand up, but too fast, and his legs go out from under him. Jace catches him before he can slam his head against the ceramic.

“I got it, okay?”

And he does. It’s not pleasant, but this is far the grossest thing he’s ever dealt with, anyway. He picks up Simon bridal style and lays him on his bed.

“Thanks.” A weak smile.

Jace puts a hand on Simon’s arm briefly. “Anytime,” he says, and is a little startled to realize he means it.

Maia knows something is wrong the moment she enters, and she hugs Jace with an arm in greeting. “Is Simon—”

“I moved him to the bed.”

“Thank you,” she says and kisses him on the cheek before rushing into their bedroom. He blinks a little, but he doesn’t follow after.

He only catches three lines of the conversation.

“Why do you do that?” It’s said very softly.

“I don’t know, I just. I miss it. Being…I miss it.”

A sigh. “I know. It’s okay.”

~*~

It’s pretty obvious to just about everyone that Isabelle and Clary are in love.

And it’s also obvious to almost everyone, including him, that they would probably act on it were it not for him being around. Isabelle’s a kind person, and he knows she doesn’t want to hurt him, but it’s pretty obvious.

They’re walking home after a pretty productive night, talking about various very ultimately unimportant things. It’s far tensee than it should be.

So he says, “You know, at some point, you should probably ask Clary out.” She gives him a surprised glance, and he says, “You don’t have to not do what you want to because of me, Izzy. And I’ve been over it for a while, okay?”

And—yeah. His issues with love are more theoretical now, not centered over any specific people.

“Alright,” she says, with a very delicate smile. They keep walking.

~*~

The thing is, sometimes, you’re across town, and you think if you disturb Magnus Bane while he’s with his boyfriend who is your brother he will kill you, and home is a forty-five-minute train away, and you have a complicated friendship with a werewolf and vampire who are in love.

The thing is, sometimes you’re tired, and you’re well aware you have good lockpicking skills.

He shows up at the apartment and plops on the couch. He’s out like a light in a minute.

~*~

When Jace is sleeping, Simon and Maia come home.

“Did you give him a key?” Maia asks.

“I definitely didn’t,” replies Simon.

They pull a blanket over him and stay quiet so they don’t wake him up.

~*~

“Hey,” a voice. “Jace. Hey.”

When he opens his eyes, Maia’s over him. She’s wearing a green headscarf and her hair’s in a ponytail. “Alright, you’re up,” she says. “We’re going grocery shopping.”

He blinks. “What?”

“Up, we gotta go, you broke into my apartment and Simon’s with Luke today, so we are going grocery shopping.”

“That doesn’t—”

“I’m dead serious,” she says, grabbing a reusable bag and putting a blanket in it for some reason. “I will pour water on you.”

They have a little stare-off, which she wins. He rolls off the couch and stands. “I’ll go clean up.”

Afterward, they go down the street to the small grocery store, and Maia starts throwing things into the bag.

“Is there a list or something?”

“Yup, in my head. Could you get one of those chocolate cakes they sell?”

“Um, this one?”

“Perfect. Also get the turkey sandwiches and paper plates.”

“Alright.” He gathers the rest of the stuff that she asks for which actually is only about six in total, and then she heads to the counter to check out.

“A party?” the cashier asks.

“No, a picnic.”

Jace looks at her. “What?”

“Well, you’re a lucky guy,” the cashier says.

“We’re friends,” he clarifies.

“Ah,” the cashier says, sounding almost pitying, and Jace can’t really muster up the effort to be annoyed about it. He’d probably pity him too.

They head back into the train and Jace says, “You never said anything about a picnic.”

“True,” she says. “Simon said you wouldn’t agree so I suggested deceit.”

He smiles exasperatedly and puts his head against the glass. “I hate you,” he says.

“No, you don’t.” Which is true, and he hates __that.__

They get off, then take an Uber to the entrance of a park. He wouldn’t tell her, but she’s kinda adorable, standing at the base of the hill, looking very small.

“Let’s do this,” she says and starts walking, which, okay.

About halfway up the hill, she almost trips and he catches her and says, “I __could__ just carry you.”

“You could, but will you?”

He scoops her up and she shrieks for a moment, and it takes him twice as long to get up there, but it works.

“We’re here,” she says, and he puts her down, and—oh.

On the top, there’s a lake, glittering and pristine. He sets her down very carefully, and she starts to takes off her shirt and jeans to reveal a one piece, and he did __not__  expect swimming, he didn’t even prepare for a picnic.

“Simon!” she calls out, and there he is across the lake, and he cannonballs into the water, swimming to the other side in seconds thanks to vampire speed.

“You just gonna stand there?”

He’s not.

After some swimming (and Simon splashing water in his eyes, but Jace comes right back at him, so they’re even) they get out and eat, spreading out Maia’s blanket on the grass and talking as water drips out of their hair. Simon sips blood from a bottle, keeping some distance between him and the food, and it gets dark enough that the stars come out, and then they look for constellations. He points out Lyra: “It’s tiny; do you see that? That star is called Vega and if you follow it, it’s like a more triangular eight, yeah, there.”

Maia points out Cassiopeia, imperceptibly spinning backward through the sky, and it’s perfect. There’s starlight playing off Maia and Simon’s faces, and he watches them and feels incredibly warm for a moment, and then he’s a little puzzled looking at them. Just a bit perplexed.

Then Simon puts two fingers against his chest, on a rune. “This rune means gift, right?” he says kinda softly. Jace has to physically stop himself from shivering. “Looks like Cassiopeia.”

And then, with a very quiet horror, he understands what the warmth meant. Means.

~*~

He doesn’t go to the bar, and he doesn’t go to their apartment. He frankly disappears and holes up in the Institute except for when he has a job, and he becomes incredibly good at avoidance. The next time he finishes a job far from home, he takes the risk and goes to Magnus’s.

“Hey,” he says when he opens the door. “I brought back your knife.”

It disappears from Jace’s hand. “What do you want?”

“Can I sleep here?”

“Haven’t Maia and Simon adopted you?”

He works his jaw. “Can’t go there.”

Magnus exhales and opens the door.

They sit down on the couch, and Magnus asks, “Want to explain why?”

A short laugh. Not particularly. “We went swimming,” he says.

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” he says, burrowing into the sofa.

“ _ _Oh.__ ”

“Shut up.”

“Look, Jace,” Magnus starts, standing up. He looks tired, and he’s wearing a nightgown, so he was probably about to head to bed before Jace arrived. “It’s your life. You can be let yourself be happy, or you can bottle it up. No one else can make that choice for you.”

~*~

Except, there isn’t a choice, because Simon turns up at Magnus’s place in the morning. The door opens, but Magnus is currently unwilling to get out of bed, and Simon says, “Hey, Magnus? Clary asked me to…” he trails off when he sees Jace. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Jace says, feeling very frozen. There wasn’t enough time to move away and pretend he wasn’t here.

“You kinda just ghosted,” Simon says.

“I was doing other stuff.” Has he always sounded this much like an asshole?

Simon scrunches up his nose. “Yeah, but. I thought we were friends now…?”

Somewhere in the very, very back of his mind, there’s a little boy that says, with hope, __we are?__ but things like these never end well. Plus, this apartment is pretty high off the ground. He really could just jump out the window.

So instead, he chooses silence. Like an idiot, though that’s really the prerequisite for all his actions at this point.

“Well, alright then.” Simon adjusts his collar and doesn’t make eye contact. “Where’s Magnus.”

“His room.”

“Is—”

“Alec’s not here.”

Simon shuffles into the bedroom, and Jace leaves before they can talk again, and he’s awful, he’s always been awful and now he’s going to undo everything.

~*~

Jace knocks on the door to Simon and Maia’s apartment. He doesn’t know if Simon wants to talk, but. Well, he’s taking the chance that he might make things worse, but this time, with the truth.

Simon opens the door. His smile fades a bit. “Hi,” he says, widening the door. “Do you wanna come in?”

And then he’s standing in the middle of the living room, in the middle of the night, and this is several bad ideas. But.

“Um, I want to tell you…” he scratches his hair. “Is Maia here?”

“She’s working overtime.”

“Okay. Then I wanna tell you. That.” He doesn’t get this nervous, what the __Hell.__

Simon says pretty quietly, “Do you like her?”

“No, I—” Which is a blatant lie, because likes Maia more than he should, he loves her, which is the whole fucking problem and yet still only half of it. “Yes.”

Simon looks tense. “Alright, then.”

“No—Simon, listen. I like you too.”

The seriousness fades from Simon’s face, just surprise. “Oh. I—I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, I guessed.” It comes out a lot more bitter than he intended.

“You like both of us?”

Jace nods, and he can actually feel all the pride that he may have had at any point in his life draining out of his body and he just wants to go home, forever. Maybe dig a hole and bury himself in it. “I think I love both of you.” A __hole.__

“Oh,” Simon says.

“No, I just wanted to tell you both. I don’t want things to be awkward, but I had to, uh. I should go,” he says, thinking about the closest bridge to jump off of. “I’m sorry.”

“No, just. Hold on. Can I—?—I’m gonna just—” he takes Jace’s hand, which is terrible because Jace is sweating and his arm feels lifeless, but Simon doesn’t say anything about that. “Could you stay? Can we talk for a second?”

Simon is a kind person. Simon is a good person. But being let down gently by one of the maybe possibly loves of his life sounds terrible, and:

“Please?”

Fine. __Fine.__

~*~

“You said you wanted to talk,” Jace says. Generally, when you lay out your heart, you get your response pretty instantaneously. Because walking to the bar to get rejected by two people at once rather than one kind of feels terrible.

“I do, but it’s a question for both of us.”

“I know, but still.”

Simon smiles slightly. “We’re here, come on.” He takes his hand again and yanks him into the bar and they’re at the counter.

“Maia,” Jace says. She gives what is not at all a smile, just barely an acknowledgment.

“Hey.” She’s being cold, and he feels like crap, just.

“I love you,” he says because he might as well start this off. “I love Simon and I love you. I just do, and I was an asshole because of it because I didn’t want you to know, but I don’t want you guys to think I’m an asshole because I love you.”

What if this entire situation is a prank or a dream or a terrible mixture of both and they both laugh and he wakes up? He’ll die. He’ll never get up again, and he’ll die.

“We love you,” Simon says.

“What?” Jace says. It comes out way quieter than he meant it to.

Maia interlaces her fingers. “We brought you to a lake on a hill. There was an idyllic picnic.”

Simon says, “We watched the stars. That’s pretty romantic.”

He puts his head in his hands and says into them, “I hate the both of you.”

“You really don’t,” Simon says. Which is still true. Which he still hates is true.

~*~

They’re on the couch. It’s movie night, which both Simon and Maia insist they have. He brings a blanket that they can all fit under, and Simon is playing with his hair as Maia lays on his stomach.

He starts to hear her breathing slowly, and looks down—she’s fallen asleep there. He whispers to Simon and says, “I think she’s out.”

“Hm,” Simon replies, incredibly calm—the vampire alternative to sleepiness. “Take her to bed.”

“Do you wanna turn in too?”

“Yeah.”

They get up and Simon picks her up and they lay her on the bed, before sliding in next to her. Before Jace dozes off, Simon says, “I’m happy you’re here.”

Jace kisses his cheek. It’s the easiest thing he’s ever done.


End file.
